Is this picture taken in real life, or is it just a picture on a TV?

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So here's the question: Is the picture above taken by us in Washington, DC, or did we take it merely watching a television 2400 miles away in Las Vegas?

The answer amazingly it is the latter. It is just a picture on a TV at the world's largest consumer electronics trade show.

The TV in question is the Sharp 8K4K LCD, the world's first 8K television first announced at IFA in Berlin in September 2011 and on show in America for the first time at CES in Las Vegas.

We first saw the Sharp 4K8K television last year and were blown away by the quality of the visuals on show. However, we have now had a second chance to enjoy the crisp picture quality like you've never seen before.

This Sharp 85-inch monster has a resolution of 7680 x 4320. That's around 33 million pixels - 16 times more than your Full HD TV boasts (1080p is 1920 x 1080). It has a luminance of 300cd/m squared and you're looking at a graduation of 10 bits for each RGB.

If you don't really understand the technicalities, let us make it simple for you. This TV has a picture so crisp that you'll almost feel like you are looking through a window rather than watching something that has been recorded.

The bad news of course is that currently nothing is filmed at this level of resolution quality. However that will change. And change quicker than you think.

The BBC has confirmed that it will be shooting some of the Olympics in Super Hi Vision (as it is known) later this year and show the results via three 15-metre high screens around the country, at the Beeb's own Pacific Quay building in Glasgow, the National Media Museum in Bradford and of course Broadcasting House in London.

And, as you might have guessed we weren't at the shuttle launch, or know those couples snapped either.